Click on the play button to listen to report.

Are you having trouble with poor reproductive performance, unexplained infertility or abortions on your dairy? If so - your cows may have bovine leptospirosis - which Pfizer Animal Health Dairy Technical Services Veterinarian Dr. Greg Edwards says is one of the most important infectious diseases affecting cattle reproduction in the United States. Edwards says the bacteria are highly mobile and persist in warm, wet conditions. Dairy cows can become hosts of the bacteria and shed it through urine to other cows.

Edwards: “Leptospirosis can cause poor reproduction performance, delayed breeding, unexplained infertility, early embryonic death, weak and still born calves and abortion. In fact cows infected with leptospirosis are eight times more less likely to become pregnant. The disease can also go undetected and go from cow to cow without you knowing it.”

Edwards says the key to limiting the negative effects of leptospirosis is to vaccinate to prevent the disease before it is established.

Edwards: “It is also important to make sure that the vaccine that you choose protects against Lepto hardjo-bovis, the most prevalent strain in the U.S. Bovi-Shield GOLD FP L5 HB is the only viral combination vaccination on the market that prevents infection of Lepto hardjo-bovis in the kidneys, shedding in the urine as well as preventing establishment in the reproductive tract. This is the highest label claim and no other vaccine has this level of protection against Lepto hardjo-bovis.”